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AI Education

Turkish Student Arrested For Using AI To Cheat in University Exam (reuters.com) 49

Turkish authorities have arrested a student for cheating during a university entrance exam by using a makeshift device linked to AI software to answer questions. From a report: The student was spotted behaving in a suspicious way during the exam at the weekend and was detained by police, before being formally arrested and sent to jail pending trial. Another person, who was helping the student, was also detained.

Turkish Student Arrested For Using AI To Cheat in University Exam

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  • Back in my day we only had Google to cheat with.

    Actually, most my schooling predates Google, so a manual technique known as "peeking" was used.

    (Just joking, I don't condone cheating.)

    • by LazarusQLong ( 5486838 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @02:56PM (#64547191)
      back in my day we attempted to learn to write legibly in a very tiny way, then would write clues to as many issues as we had with the lessons on our wrists, underneath our wristwatches... of course, this was decades before 40 mm watches became popular. then, one day, was it 7th grade? or 8th, when i realized that the teacher was actually being honest when she told us all that we are really cheating ourselves when we cheat on a test. From that epiphany onward, i never cheated again. I cannot say that for the majority of my classmates... you know, the 60-something year olds that claim to have never heard of segregation in the United States? The ones that can't tell you when or how the Vietnam war was ended? The ones that don't know about the three branches of the U.S. Federal Government? The ones that don't understand why the U.S. President does not hold total and complete power over the other branches? Yeah.
    • by JSG ( 82708 )

      In my day we used to hide a full set of Encyclopedia Pretannikoi down our tunics along with a mini abacus and bribe the invigilator to look the other way.

      I was a member of the final academic year in the UK that qualified with O levels (O for Ordinary - yes, I am ordinary!). Afterwards, the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) trundled in. I also hold two of the first year of AS levels (half an A level - Advanced level) along with a couple of full strength A levels. I applied to and attended

      • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        In my day we used to hide a full set of Encyclopedia Pretannikoi down our tunics...

        Many Greeks were indeed chubby because they had slaves to do their grunt work.

  • by HBI ( 10338492 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @12:45PM (#64546839)

    It seems pretty effective as far as I can tell. It looks for similar verbiage patterns.

    The bottom line is that paper grading is a rubric and as long as the papers check the boxes in the rubric they get graded well. They aren't being read per se most of the time. This is a great situation for a meaningless prose generator like a LLM. It doesn't even have to actually make sense, and often doesn't.

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @12:47PM (#64546849)

    jail for exam cheating?
    do they get an jury?
    get to face your accuser in court?

    Don't the police have much better things to do?

    • by Powercntrl ( 458442 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @12:55PM (#64546887) Homepage

      Don't the police have much better things to do?

      If this had happened in the USA, yeah, but we're talking Turkey (pun intended). They're pretty harsh on nonconforming behaviors.

    • You'd think that cheating in university would be a breach of contract between the student and the institution, resulting in the university having the option to keep a record of the offence, the right to share that with other educational institutions doing transcript checks, expel the student with no degree, and ban them from re-entry.

      The legal system should only get involved if the student challenges the university claiming innocence, and even then I'd see the involvement of police and jail cells as a waste of the taxpayer's money.

      However... not my country, not my rules. As long as they aren't whipping him in the public square or something, I don't really have a strong opinion about whether their way is better or worse beyond the financial one.

      • and locked up in other places get let out do to the jails being to full?
        Was the bail to high for them to bail out?

      • It depends on what the exam is for and what its overall impact is. Would you want to be treated by a doctor who cheated his way through medical school? Live in a house designed by an architect who cheated his way through school? Work with machinery designed by engineers who cheated their way through school??
        • That's all AFTER the degree or diploma is fraudulently obtained and covered under other laws.

          Cheating on your exams is not yet malpractice, it's just cheating on your exams. If the penalty is termination of your education and no degree or diploma ever... that seems like it's probably enough.

    • by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @01:15PM (#64546945)

      It is not a simple school exam, it is the national university entrance, so cheating makes it a fraud against the State. It's a normal thing to risk jailtime in these situations, even in the developed world (in France the nominal penalty is 3 years in jail). What is surprising here is to apply jail as provisional measure, in a situation where there is no risk of continuation of the criminal activity, nor risk for public order, nor risk of evasion from justice (the typical criteria to apply temporary jail).

      • "It is not a simple school exam, it is the national university entrance, so cheating makes it a fraud against the State"

        Unless you are talking about a private school with no government funding (ha ha) then that same logic applies to basically any school.

        • by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @03:45PM (#64547313)

          This is the exam that grants government-protected privileges (the right apply to certain professions). The rationale applies to exams, but in some intermediate school tests only where the intermediate grade is taken into account with the final exam grade to award the degree. Legal explanation on the website of the French government: https://www.service-public.fr/... [service-public.fr]

          In a famous case in 2011, the son of a printing technician managed to get a copy of a math exam before the exam, and leaked it to friends. Four students who got a paper copy in hands were convinced of fraud and sentenced to 3 or 4 months of parole. (They got caught because they leaked it on an internet forum for teenagers the day before the exam.)
          Press coverage when it happened https://www.slate.fr/story/400... [slate.fr] / Sentencing https://www.20minutes.fr/socie... [20minutes.fr]

          • Just to state it clear: rationale does not apply to regular test at school (private to public) because these tests do not per se grant government-protected privileges.

        • No, it doesnâ(TM)t. The state provides 4 years of free education to people qualified to enter the university. The entrance exam is the only criterion, determining not only the school but also the department. Itâ(TM)s not a perfect system by any means, but cheating on this exam deprives another student of a spot. Students spend 2 years of their lives doing nothing but preparing for this exam. The people would NOT stand for a cheater not being punished.

        • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@ w o r f .net> on Thursday June 13, 2024 @09:02PM (#64547897)

          "It is not a simple school exam, it is the national university entrance, so cheating makes it a fraud against the State"

          Unless you are talking about a private school with no government funding (ha ha) then that same logic applies to basically any school.

          You're looking at it the wrong way. It's basically The Exam. It's an exam that dictates your future - will be you a laborer, a taxi driver, or will you be able to go to trade school, or university, or go to a foreign university to study?

          It's the gatekeeping exam. I'm guessing it's a derivative of the old British school system, since many former British colonies still use The Exam as the gatekeeping test for future studies, notably in Asia.

          Basically the options are, "you're too stupid to continue studies - your schooling ends here, go find an unskilled job", to "you're a spectacular student, and you'll have a scholarship to learn and study overseas" often with several categories - the dumbest of the smartest might go to some no-name European university, while the smartest of the smart get to choose from prestigious Ivy Leagues and other high ranking schools, to not only get a Bachelor's, but advanced Masters and even Doctorates as well.

          So yes, the incentive to cheat is extremely high when it's the great sorting hat of your future. Presumably like in Asia, you'll find the incidence of teenage suicide is much higher as well, because teens crack under the pressure (and generally when they're most vulnerable to such things as well).

          The cheating industry has made many products for students for this reason - from watches that can hold pages of text, to small communication devices to many more things. And parents aren't innocent in all this as well - contributing to the pressure is one way, but often purchasing these products to help gain an advantage isn't unheard of as well. Nor are they above bribing a few officials.

          It should be noted many times you do not ever get another chance at The Exam. Unless the American system where if you didn't get in at MIT, no big deal, you can try community college or other post secondary education places. Where really the biggest decision isn't governed by your standing academically, but to answer the question "What to do after you graduate high school?". As bad as the education system is, at least it offers second chances and choices.

          • by dargaud ( 518470 )

            As bad as the education system is, at least it offers second chances and choices.

            ...as long as you have money to keep trying. Lots of money. With The Exam, or similar exams at 18 in other countries, it's usually free, and the subsequent university studies are free as well. And the state (=taxpayers) doesn't want to waste money on you to keep trying for years to find your way trying to get in via various doors. That's the flip side.

      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        It is not a simple school exam, it is the national university entrance, so cheating makes it a fraud against the State. It's a normal thing to risk jailtime in these situations, even in the developed world (in France the nominal penalty is 3 years in jail). What is surprising here is to apply jail as provisional measure, in a situation where there is no risk of continuation of the criminal activity, nor risk for public order, nor risk of evasion from justice (the typical criteria to apply temporary jail).

        Turkey is still in many ways a developing country. It's easy for someone to disappear there so flight risk is a serious issue and the law enforcement is well, quite representative of that of a developing nation.

        The idea of holding him is to discourage the activity in others, the effectiveness of this I'll agree is very much debatable.

    • jail for exam cheating?

      Dont get carried away, the article said he was arrested not jailed.

      I agree it seems rather harsh but, with the rampant cheating going on in univeristies today someone needs to start handing out harsh penalties to stop it and while that absolutely should be the universities themselves, in the absence them growing backbones and enacting harsh academic penalities something needs to happen to reduce the cheating since it is getting to the point where it is threatening to undermine the validity of degrees an

      • "and was detained by police, before being formally arrested and sent to jail pending trial."

      • nope: "before being formally arrested and sent to jail pending trial."
      • and do the schools want the discovery of an full trial?

        jail time for self plagiarism?
        jail time for makeing an error when you Cite Sources?

        • Sure - I'd happily send all necessary material over to some prosecutor who then handles the whole thing. At the moment it's entirely on the instructor to collect all the evidence, meet with the student, report on that meeting and make the case that they cheated. Simply sending all the evidence off to a prosecutor would be much less work.

          Note that I do not think this is a good idea at all - things like this should be handled by the university - but as universities are getting overwhelmed by the sheer numb
    • If exam cheating is a felony in Turkey, why wouldn't police investigate it?
    • Newsflash, other countries do things differently than the USA does, News at 11.

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    • > jail for exam cheating?

      I think this is completely justified. It's not just any exam, but an entry exam for UNIVERSITY.

      > do they get an jury?

      First of all, it's "a jury" (because the next word starts with a consonant in pronunciation).

      Not every country has the idiotic concept of putting non-experts in a position to decide the punishment for someone who did something wrong. I'd much rather trust the experts (judges, prosecutors, and lawyers) to manage the trial, than some non-experts who have been put

  • I'm always amazed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hoi Polloi ( 522990 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @12:51PM (#64546869) Journal

    I'm always amazed by the effort people will put in to avoiding doing the legitimate effort

    • I'm always amazed by the effort people will put in to avoiding doing the legitimate effort

      Isn't that the mantra of Millenials and Gen Z?
    • by alta ( 1263 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @01:26PM (#64546981) Homepage Journal

      They just used a skill they're good at to compensate for a skill they're not good at. Seems like a good hire to me!

    • They don't (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @01:55PM (#64547067) Journal

      I'm always amazed by the effort people will put in to avoiding doing the legitimate effort

      They generally don't. The vast majority of academic cheaters I've caught over the years are generally as good at cheating as they are at understanding the material i.e. not at all. You do hear of the ocassional one that goes to greater lengths to cheat but generally if you are smart enough and have the time to implement more elaborate cheating you are also smart enough and have the time to learn the material and do well which carries no risk and a much greater reward.

      Then there are some real winners who cheat with no upside at all. During Covid when most universities switched to pass/fail course grades and exams went online we caught a lot of students cheating on final exams. Unfortuantely for them, many actually went into the exam with strong enough term grades that they would have passed the course without even taking the final exam but instead the idiots went to the effort to cheat and thereby earned themselves a disciplinary fail instead of doing nothing - even skipping the exam! - and passing.

    • This is why AI is not good. People will and are using it to do their work for them. Writing papers, writing code etc...
      At that rate we don't need the people - get rid of them, they aren't doing the work anyway. Why pay them or let them in school.
      If AI is writing their school papers - it's plagiarism - it's not their own work, kick them out of school.
      If they are an employee and they are using AI to write their code, fire them, you don't need them Just let the AI do their job.
  • this makes no sense, a guy is capable of designing and implementing a system with a camera, and router integrated with an AI model to cheat in a university entrance exam. He already knows enough to pass the exam.
  • by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @01:41PM (#64547033)
    Generative AI is the new calculators/Adderall. Its propriety is being met with skepticism right now. In fifteen years, though, it'll be presumptive evidence of bad parenting if you don't get your kids eye, ear, and brain implants that allow them to parrot back whatever the onboard AI tells them the answer is to whatever question the teachers' onboard AIs tell them to ask.
  • by ChubbySkunk ( 8339909 ) on Thursday June 13, 2024 @03:33PM (#64547295)
    They found em out when one of their responses included, "By the way, did you know I can also recommend books from your favorite authors directly to your phone or kindle?"
  • The most difficult tests in my memory were open book tests. The standard instructions were "bring anything but a live friend". Seems that AI now is a live friend. T2

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